


take on the dark

by mamalovesherbagels



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: and with everyone that happens mid to late season 2, chimney has undiagnosed OCD in this story, he gets pushed over the edge, up front trigger warning for suicidal thoughts and suicidal intent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27788827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamalovesherbagels/pseuds/mamalovesherbagels
Summary: His memory is unforgiving. He can't stop going over it all in his head-- from when Doug introduced himself as "Jason" to Shannon dying in his care because he, the captain, had told Hen not to intubate her yet. Chimney is circling the drain during his time as temporary captain in season 2 and he doesn't know how to pull out of it.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	take on the dark

.

Maybe it’s the fact that his apartment hasn’t felt this empty in a long while. Since before Maddie, since before Bobby got suspended, since before he was named interim captain…

He’s always lived alone in it, but usually he has more frequent visitors. Hen, Karen, Denny, Buck, Bobby, Eddie, Maddie… not it’s all quiet, all the time. He never goes through his mother’s things, not since he tucked them away in a drawer when he moved into this apartment, but maybe he’s just longing to feel some sort of connection, and that’s why he finds his hands trembling as they hold the cool pearls of a necklace.

His mother’s favorite. 

A memory of him laughing as they ran across the street before the crosswalk timer ran out, his hand tight in hers, blows over him like the wind on an already cold winter’s day. He had hoped that thinking of his mother, that seeing and touching her belongings would help him feel less alone, but it has the opposite effect.

It’s quiet in the apartment, no matter how hard he tries to think of her voice in his head.

.

Being captain is a job for someone with certainty, something of which Chimney has none. He’s smart, he knows this on some level-- naive, but smart. But he can never be certain.

When he’s in charge, he can never let anything just be. He makes the decision in the moment, it feels right, he acts and he moves on.

Then later it creeps right back into his mind, and he relieves the situation over and over again, desperate to find something that he did wrong or something that he could have done better and sometimes there’s someone in his home at the end of the day whose presence can help distract them, but these days it’s quiet other than his own ragged breathing.

He thinks of Hen lying still on the floor, trapped in the vault and the hours it takes to get her out. He thinks of that first bombing victim, how he ignored the protocol because he was the most experienced paramedic on sight.

It worked out in those two cases, even if he could have done things better.

He thinks of Shannon dying, and the decision he had made not to intubate right away.

It didn't work out. She’s gone; Eddie is wife-less and Christopher has lost his mother and no matter how many times Hen tells him that he made the right call and that Shannon was going to die either way, he can’t stop going through every second over and over again until he can’t even tell what’s real from that day or not anymore.

But most especially, he thinks of Doug, or how he introduced himself to him as Jason. Too many coincidences. Too many see through coincidences that are now flags as red as the firetrucks that he hadn’t been able to see at the time.

He thinks back to everything-- to when they first met at the Christmas tree farm shopping for a tree that Maddie hadn’t even fucking wanted (he messed that up before it could begin too) right up until the knife left his stomach for the last time.

He failed her and now Doug’s dead but neither of them will ever be the same.

He wishes he could forget it, wishes that he could forget it all but every moment outside of work is spent driving down mental roads he’s already been down dozens of times before, agonizing over every time he should’ve chosen better.

He falls asleep after a few hours that night.

He wakes up even before 2 am.

He sees Doug’s face, then Eddie’s after he had been told Shannon died, then Maddie’s before she walked out of his apartment.

.

There’s another fucking bombing and he’s done, he can’t do it anymore. The first one was enough of a nightmare, but it’s not a coincidence-- he knows to be more wary of those now-- that two bombs have been sent to two unsuspecting people within the same week.

There’s a madman bomber on the loose and he’s the fucking fire captain. He can’t do it, he can’t, it’s all too much far too down and the thought of more people potentially dying because of potential wrong decisions he could make at potential bombing scenes that they’re called to is just too much to bear.

He needs an exit plan. He could step down as captain, but then what are the repercussions of that? He had been strongarmed into it by the higher ups, not having been given much of a choice, and he can’t help but think he shouldn’t feel… optimistic about his place in the LAFD if he were to go against them now.

And how was he supposed to face his teammates, the people he loves like family and admit that he failed, that he wasn’t good enough to be captain and then be able to still look them in the eye and expect them to trust him out on calls? No, he can’t, he can’t be captain but he knows he has no real choice and he feels backed into a corner and--

“Chim? I mean, sorry, Cap. Are you even listening to me?”

“What?”

“Well, I guess you weren’t listening,” Buck says with a bit of an impatient huff, but if Chimney were actually looking at his face he’d see the concern in his younger friend’s eyes.

“Sorry, Buckaroo. What’s up?”

“I asked if you’ve been talking to my sister lately at all,” Buck says carefully, craning his neck to try and get a good look at his interim captain’s face.

“No, Buck, we’re….”

“Taking a minute, I know she said the same thing but I didn’t know if that meant you two weren’t talking at all.”

“We’re not. But why? Is something wrong?” he asks, feeling his heart rate starting to ratchet up for what feels like the tenth time that day, and he’s only two hours into the shift.

“I don’t know,” Buck sighs, reaching out a hand to touch Chimney’s shoulder but he flinches away, “she’s been quiet lately. I thought maybe you--”

“We’re not talking,” he reiterates, shaking his head as if to forcibly expel the worst case scenarios for what could be going on with Maddie from his head, but it’s not working.

“Chim, what about you?” Buck asks carefully, “are you okay? Maddie’s my sister and she has to come first, and you’ve been annoying as captain but you’re still my friend--”

“I’m fine,” he practically spits, not wanting the concern that belongs to Maddie and Maddie only to land on him for even a moment, “I’m not the one whose ex-husband abducted them.”

.

He replays that conversation with Buck over and over again in his mind. Shocker. 

It’s 3 am when he finally gives in and texts her, asking if she’s okay.

He’s not surprised when she doesn’t respond, given the hour, but when it’s 9 am the next day and he’s leaving to go pick up his dry cleaning and she still hasn’t answered? He’s still not surprised, but it still hurts.

They’re not talking, they’re supposed to be giving her space and there he was, reaching out to her anyway for his own selfish need to reassure himself that she’s relatively arlight because he loves her.

He loves her. Yeah, of course he does. She deserves better than him, than the man who put her in danger even if it was on accident, so it’s not surprising that she doesn’t want to hear from him.

But he still loves her, and Hen has told him about a million times that “a minute” doesn’t mean he and Maddie are over forever, and that even if they are over that he won’t always love her, that he’ll be able to move on eventually, but right now neither of those things feel true.

.

He doesn’t know it, but Maddie is in the break room with Josh trying to write out the perfect response to his text. They’re trying to find the right balance of honesty about how she’s actually doing without worrying him too much, and how to show that she appreciates him reaching out without seeming too overzealous.

He also doesn’t know that Hen is putting his favorite cookies into her basket at the grocery store when her eyes gloss over them, having noticed how stressed he’s seemed lately and wanting to make him smile.

He doesn’t realize that either of those things are happening as his dad brutally tears him apart, word by word, over Skype. Someone must have told him. Someone that knew his dad back from when he lived in the United States must have recognized the name “Howard Han,” and forwarded a news article to him, and his dad must have realized it was him…

And his dad isn’t even angry, is what hurts the most. It’s that familiar unsurprised disappointment that stings, the way he tells him that of course his first son with the way things turned out this far would almost die for a woman he’d only known for months, and put both her and him in danger because he was stupid enough to be tricked by her ex-husband.

Yes, he’s said all those things to himself, but it feels like complete, undeniable confirmation to hear it all said out loud by someone else.

He’s done, he needs an out. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t let everyone down all the time and then spend what time he isn’t letting people down obsessively ruminating over all the time that he has. He’s tired. He’s tired of himself, he’s tired of failing, he’s tired of feeling so god damn anxious and insane.

He’s done.

He’s done.

His thoughts turn to his mom, wondering if he’ll see her, wondering if they’ll be reunited and how disappointed she’ll be that he’s there with her so quickly and that he went on his own volition.

He finds himself fumbling through that drawer again, holding her necklace with much more steady hands. Another memory. His mother in her final weeks, telling him all that she hoped he’d do and experience in his life, and conversely, all that she hoped she would have been able to do before she died, had she not been sick.

The bucket list items that she couldn’t attain for herself.

One stands out in particular, because at the time it hadn’t made much sense to him, and still didn’t at the moment. But there’s no reason that he couldn’t do it, just quickly in her honor before he went to join her.

His mother, who ended up falling in love with LA and much more generally the United States as a whole after spending the majority of her life in Korea had wanted to see all of it-- all of the landmarks, all of the major attractions. 

His mother had always wanted to go to Vegas.

He has today off, as do the rest of the team. He can set up a replacement captain for “just a few days” with one phone call and then be on the road by nightfall. Hen, Buck, Eddie, they’ll be surprised that he’s suddenly gone on “vacation” without warning but… nothing that would freak them out, right? Besides, he’s been admittedly a nuisance as captain so they’d probably be glad to have a break.

No one would realize that it was only intended to be a one way trip before he’d already be… gone. He’ll write a note, maybe some form of explanation might help them, right? But he’s not going to leave it here, not in his apartment because Hen has a key to his place and he doesn’t want her to find it before she’s supposed to and figure him out.

He grabs his mother’s necklace, zipping it into a pocket in his bag right then so he won’t forget to take it with him.


End file.
